Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Summer. I stand on
the sidewalk at dusk and watch wild geese fly north; crying, crying into dark
night. The American flag snaps in the wind, a sharp, familiar noise. When I
look back, the V is gone, the night quiet. Ahead of me my husband pushes our
one year old son in the stroller. I have lagged behind, tired, restless. Rain brought
the end of a humid spell. The day was blue skied, cool with lofty clouds. In
the afternoon I scooped up my red-haired boy and whispered in his ear, you are all I’ve ever wanted. It
startled me to say that. I pressed my lips to the soft pillow of his cheek. He
threw back his head and laughed, then brought his small hands to my face and
pressed them into my cheeks. His blue eyes mirroring mine.

Summer. We used to
covet night. My not-yet-husband and I. Sitting at outdoor café tables in town,
sipping whiskey on ice or cold pints of beer, listening to country bands, acoustic
guitars strummed by young men in love. We drove to the beach, it was the only place I wanted. Not home, no, never
home. I didn’t want the night to end. Swimming, the moon hung amid the bramble
of clouds. Its dappled light fell where the water shoaled and we plunged in and
floated face up, bodies freed. Sometimes a lone sailboat drifted at the edge of
our swimming cove, and I thought of all the places I wanted to go, and other
times we lost each other in the shadow of trees or the darkness of a new moon
night but never for long. In the sunlight, our love felt fragile, but not there
in the dark, our bodies wet and kissing.

Summer. The loon
calls deep into the night. As a child, I slept all summer in the loft of a
cabin beside a murky lake. Some nights I climbed into bed between my parents.
Their bed lay level with the open window and I on my belly could look out into
the night and the lake, could seek the moon in its bed of sky. There in the
cold of the lake the loons cried, a fluted howl, an echo that reverberated in
my chest, stuck in my own throat, paddled at the rivers of my heart. The call
of the loon still haunts me when I hear it, visiting my parents in Minnesota,
my son asleep beside me. It’s a beautiful haunting, a way of aching. And like
muscle memory, I slip into the intimacy of longing.

About Me

I once heard a poet speak of the mouth of the river -- a place I sensed was full and rushing with both glee and the sorrow that makes us seek higher thought through which we might be sustained in this wilderness of passing through. Welcome. Please write me here often.
I am a writer, teacher, and mother living in Vermont.